


And Burn

by writingishard (camisadomg)



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: A lot of healing, Car Accidents, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, M/M, Mentioned Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camisadomg/pseuds/writingishard
Summary: Nightmares are a common thing in Hawkins, Indiana, though they typical deal with supernatural things like monsters from another dimension. Billy Hargrove had been living a nightmare before he even moved to the place, and one car crash was all it took to send things spiraling out of control.





	And Burn

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up being a lot longer than I planned (as writing usually goes for me)

The mirrors were crooked. Not only crooked, but totally fucked. How in the hell anyone managed to safely drive the car, he didn't know. Once realizing this, he was too annoyed and maybe too proud to admit that not being able to see the lane next to him was scary. The roads were vacant, after all, it was well past three in the morning. Hawkins, Indiana was not heavily trafficked even during the regular hours of the day.

The car was loud and intimidating. The wheel vibrated under Steve Harrington's hands and that was distracting enough for him to forget about the mirrors. Just the loud jolt of the engine revving in his driveway was enough to shock him out of sleep, dreams filled with roars of Demodogs filling his ears and heart pounding. It turned out to be Billy Hargrove, and Steve suddenly wished it was a Demodog that he could kill with his beloved hybrid baseball bat. Billy was a little harder to get rid of.

He stood in Steve's driveway, car idling, smoking a cigarette. Shrugging on a shirt Steve met him outside and said, "What the fuck, Hargrove?" His breath plumed in front of his face from the morning cold. "You're gonna wake up the whole goddamned neighborhood."

It had been a few weeks since the events at the Byers' house. The two hadn't talked, but there was definitely something changed in Billy. During basketball he only charged Steve when necessary; afterward, in the locker room, Billy would avoid Steve altogether. Seeing him appear at his house after all of the silence was not a comforting visage for Steve.

Billy asked, "Ever wanted to drive a car that wasn't a piece of shit?" His breath plumed, too, but more due to the cigarette he was puffing away on.

"Now that you mention it," Steve began. "No."

Billy chuckled, flicked his cancer stick away. "Last chance," he called, voice a faux-tease that made Steve shiver. "Come on, princess. If Max can take this baby for a little joyride, then surely King Steve can handle it."

Steve tried not to think about why the two nicknames thrown so haphazardly together bothered him so badly. "If I drive your damn hunk'a'junk, will you go away?"

"I guess," Billy shrugged. There was a smile on his face that made Steve think that Billy was planning more than just a casual morning drive around town. 

So, Steve slid into the driver side and hesitantly palmed the wheel, immediately feeling the thunderous engine. "Shit," he muttered, gingerly pulling the unused seat belt across his lap. He threw it into reverse after Billy fell in and slammed the door shut. He was used to driving stick-shift, so his right hand felt a little useless without a place to rest, and using two hands on the wheel felt unbalanced, oddly enough.

Around the time Steve turned out of the comfy cul-de-sac of homes was when he realized just how fucked Billy's mirrors were. Sure, the windows were battery-powered, but god forbid Billy have mirrors that could be adjusted without physically stopping the car and using your hands. All in all, Steve felt more unsafe than he had in a while, which was saying a lot because after battling creatures from a different dimension, it took a lot to rattle his bones. To distract from the blind fear he asked, "Where're we goin'?"

Billy had been humming next to him, drumming on the dash to music that he heard in his head. It sounded a little like  _American Pie,_ but way off-key and out of rhythm. "Up to you, princess." He banged a little harder, relented, turned on the radio. The sudden blast of sound made Steve jump, the wheel buzzing with the percussion on top of the engine. Whatever music Billy liked was certainly far from Steve's definition of good. It was all noise, lyrics drowned out by the crash of symbols and the thump of bass, wailing voices competing with wailing guitars. "Hey!" Billy screeched, and Steve gasped. "Take the ramp to the highway."

"Fuck no," Steve hissed. "I'm not taking this automatic piece of junk on the highway. I don't trust it." The truth that Steve didn't tell Billy was that he knew that going on the highway meant merging and he couldn't fucking see out of the goddamn review mirrors. Sure, Hawkins may have been sleeping, but a major highway connecting the cities was sure to have other drivers on it at any hour. Steve drove past the on-ramp and toward the arcade, movie theater, all of the places the junior high kids liked to infest. "Why'd you even come to my place?"

"Nothing better to do," Billy told him, though his eyes were distant and the words didn't carry the same amount of force that Billy commanded. In his mind, Max was yelling at him, plunging a needle into his neck, then she was crying as her step-father smashed a dinner plate against the wall

_(Billy had smashed a plate on Steve's head)_

and pointed the jagged pieces toward Billy, swinging wildly, threatening. In his mind, Billy was jumping down the stairs, taking no head of the ankle that screamed in agony as he landed crookedly-- crooked like his mirrors.

He didn't say any of that to Steve.

"You too cool for sleep, too?" Steve scoffed.

"Guess so." He pounded on the dash and his laps and the door, ignoring the ache of his knuckles. Steve began turning the car around in a slow, wide arch. Billy asked, "What're you doing?"

"I drove your death machine," he said. "Now I'm going home. To sleep. You might not need it, but I'm a normal fucking human that has to go to school tomorrow."

"Hey, believe it or not, I'm doing pretty well in school," Billy countered. "Education here is shit compared to what I was getting in California, but what can ya do?"

"They actually teach stuff out there?" Steve sneered, instinctively glancing toward the side mirror and being reminded of his blindness.

"You'd be surprised, Harrington," was all Billy said. "Hey, highway." He reached over and grabbed at the wheel, jerking it so that the car skidded across the road and then they were spiraling toward the on-ramp.

"Fuck!--" But Steve couldn't just stop the car, there were other lights shining in the overhead mirror, the only one he could actually see out of. There was nowhere to pull of the road, either, and Steve considered letting the emergency lights flash on but Billy was watching him strangely.

Then he was on the highway, and it was not busy at all, but the acceleration lane was narrowing and beginning to disappear. The car that had been behind him swerved impatiently around Steve, shooting ahead and into the darkness of the night. A few lights scattered on the other side of the road, but Steve could see no other vehicle in the overhead mirror. He kept straight, terrified, and the road started shaking them with the warning of bumpy asphalt. "Dude," Billy spat, but he was faraway.

"Uh," Steve hesitantly swung his head over his shoulder, searching, and took the chance-- and they were fine. They were cruising along at the smooth speed of eighty miles-per-hour.

" _Jesus_ , Harrington, I thought you knew how to drive!" Billy exclaimed. "Pull off at the next exit, I'll take you home."

Steve didn't like the fear that he heard in Billy's voice, but there was a mile to go between where they had started and the next exit. 

"Calm down," Steve sighed, angrily slapping at the volume knob on the radio and silencing the sounds. "We'll be fine."

"Whatever," Billy huffed.

"This was your idea," Steve reminded him. "Really, why even bother me during the middle of the night? Don't you get enough of me at school?"

When Billy spoke again, he was abnormally quiet. Steve almost didn't believe that he had said anything, but his mouth was moving and he couldn't make eye contact. "I wanted to talk, dickhead."

_"Talk?"_ Steve echoed, moving cautiously into the far right lane, letting other cars whiz past them. A sign told him there was just half a mile to go.

"Yeah," Billy nodded. "I'm trying this thing where I'm not a huge asshole."

"...It's a little late for that, buddy." Steve was shaking as he looked all around, double and triple checking for a clear coast. 

"Yeah, but I'm trying. Isn't it the thought that counts?"

"I guess." Steve was remembering Billy's fist hitting him, and he knew that the boy had been taken down by his sister, thankfully, or else Steve could have ended up dead, or brain-dead, or anything like that. "So talk."

"I'm sorry, okay?" Billy blurted out, so fast that his leg jerked wildly up and down with the words. "Max told me not to be a dick, not to

_(Not to be like my father)_

bother her or her friends anymore, and so I'm trying to just make up for all the shitty things I've done, and then disappear."

Steve said, "What do you mean, disappear?"

"Go back to California, maybe."

The exit was approaching, and a new lane began widening for cars to merge onto the off-ramp. Caught up in the dialogue, Steve didn't bother checking the overhead mirror, didn't think anyone would be rushing to speed around him to a deceleration ramp. 

There was an odd grinding sound as another car struck the back of Billy's. Steve was jerked forward, the seat belt locking and crushing his collarbone, his head slamming down, giving him whiplash. Luckily an airbag kept his skull from colliding with the hard steering wheel, but his nose did smash against the glass of the window, and a strange tangy taste filled his mouth. His ears were ringing, and his vision was dark for a while. 

The car crashed into the back of Billy's at ninety miles an hour, ten over the speed limit. Unbuckled, Billy's body was flung forward, legs catching between the airbag and the seat, snapping gruesomely, and head smashing through the window. His body wasn't dislocated from the car, but that didn't make things any better. 

The two vehicles swerved off the road from the commotion, the driver from behind actually piling on top of Billy's car before rolling pathetically away and landing upside-down. Steve groaned, and there wasn't much else to do.

When help finally came, Steve was conscious enough to see that Billy was half-in and half-out of the car, but his face was in so much pain that he passed out before the firemen could pry him out of the car.

 

\---------------------

 

There had been a time before Hawkins, Indiana. There had been a time of endless sunshine and beaches and waves and girls with legs long enough to travel and mouths skilled enough to paralyze. For Billy, California was his home. It was the last place he ever saw his mother alive, and it was the last place he had ever felt loved, truly and deeply.

Billy could remember the day his father came to pick him up from school alone. This was unusual, because he usually never came to pick Billy up at all. In fact, Billy was a little too stunned to get into the car with him at first, but his father's puffy red eyes and growling voice were enough to scare Billy into entering the vehicle. Billy was young, so young. "What's wrong, dad?" He had asked, and his father didn't answer. Curious child that he was, Billy persisted. "Where's ma? Why are you crying, dad?"

His father had slammed on the brakes, and Billy, saved by a seat belt, jerked forward. A car behind them had blared their horn and sped around them. Through clenched teeth and knuckles so white they looked like flecks of snow against the black steering wheel, Neil Hargrove told his son that his mother was dead, goddammit, why the fuck do you think I'm here? 

He learned later that it had been a car accident; his little sister had a doctor's appointment for a cough that just wouldn't let up, and his mother had planned to take her into school late, afterward.

The words didn't make sense to Billy at that time, though. He knew what dead was. _Dead_ was his pet fish on that morning they had to flush him down the toilet, his mother hugging him as he cried watching his prized possession being whipped into the sewers. _Dead_ was not that mother in the memories, and for a long time, Billy didn't react.   
Then his father drove straight passed the elementary school, where Billy's sister would have been next in line to be picked up. The man was sobbing at that point, car swerving a little because he couldn't see through the tears very clearly. Billy guessed that his sister was _dead_ like his mother, goddammit, and kept his mouth shut.

He didn't react until they got home to the empty house.

And then they jumped into the time after California.

Of course, they didn't move over night. Billy stayed in that empty house for years, taking care of himself while his father stayed out all night and drank and fucked other women that weren't Billy's mother

_(she's dead, goddammit, why the fuck do you think I'm here?)_

and didn't really care that much about Billy, even on the rare occasions that he would accidentally walk by his father's room and see them getting dressed, breasts exposed and hair askew. The time after California started when one woman kept showing up again and again, a little after Billy had turned sixteen years old and had long learned to stay out of the house for as much of the day as possible. 

He knew things were changing when a woman had stayed not only for the fucking, but for the homemade dinner and the movie afterward that she had brought her younger daughter to, a redheaded girl that looked nothing like Billy's actual sister had and made him want to punch the wall. 

Before this change, Neil Hargrove would only hit his son for typical punishments, and then grew out of the bottom-spanking phase when Billy became old enough to hit back or drive himself all around the state for nights on end. With this new woman, his father started hitting him harder than just a smack on the bottom. This was the in between time, between loving this place where the beach had cradled him just as much as his mother had and also hating it with every slap to the face or punch to the gut, every split lip and swollen eye. 

Then California was gone, that in between time a hazy memory that Billy was eager to forget, and it was all about Hawkins, Indiana. Oh, and his new step-sister, Max. His father protected her with every fiber of his being, and Billy new that it was because his younger sister had died that day all those years ago and now Neil felt like he had a second chance. Billy wanted to shake him, punch him, ask him why his second chance couldn't've been found in Billy himself, his real kid, but retreated into his beat-up car and found release in yelling at Max whenever he could. He was a little protective, but didn't know how to show it the right way. His sister had died before he could get practice, and his emotions were too muddled by hatred at how easily Max and her mother could just slip into the lost roles of his real mother and sister as though they never existed. 

He knew he was being an asshole, he knew he wasn't doing anything right, he knew he deserved it when she finally got revenge and knocked him out. _Do you understand?_ Max had yelled. Billy understood. Billy had always understood. 

Steve Harrington was eighteen years old. Soon to graduate high school, he was a prospective basketball player with a relatively active social life. He grew up in Hawkins, Indiana, protected it, fought its ugly monsters. His parents hadn't been the most attentive, but there was never anything akin to the lightest of beatings-- the worst he ever got was a smack on the hand with a wooden spoon one Christmas when he tried to steal a lick of the cookie batter made for Santa. He couldn't have been further away from Billy, experience-wise.

He had been one of the first among his friends to get his license. Driving everyone around town was practically his first job-- well, more like an unpaid internship. He was a good driver, when he had the mirrors to guide him. The car accident was not his fault. He had turned on the blinker and did not swerve into the other lane. Everything seemed textbook. A different car was speeding, and crashed right into them. The driver died on impact. Steve Harrington was eighteen years old, had fought the most gruesome beasts imaginable, and something as human as a car crash almost took his life.

Almost.

He woke up in the hospital two days later with a splitting headache and a dry mouth. His doctor ran multiple tests on his head, and told Steve that he had escaped with a broken collarbone and fractured septum. Other than some pain, he would be just fine. The doctor requested that he come back in a month to check up on his head, just to make sure everything was working the right way, but he was free to be discharged. 

Next to the hospital bed, his mother was weeping. His father was standing behind her, looking solemn. Had they been home when he left? No, of course not. They may have been gone a lot, but no parent would just let their kid out for a joyride during the middle of the night--

But Billy had been out. "Where's Billy?" Steve slurred out, head thumping with the effort.

His mother did not hear him over her sobs and his father could only pretend not to notice the noise of him trying to speak. Her mother flung herself down across her boy, and there was a sharp pain in Steve's chest. "Ow, mom," Steve shrugged a little, but that too inflamed the problem.

"Honey, you're hurting his collarbone," his father said, pulling her back. "We have to go sign those papers," he told his wife, who began sniffling and wiping at her eyes with the thin, scratchy hospital tissues.

"Right," she blubbered. "I'm so glad that you're okay, Stevie. I'm so sorry that we weren't home, so sorry--" her voice broke into more sobs and Steve's father had to sheepishly guide her out of the room to speak with a nurse. 

"I'm glad you're okay, son," he said before leaving. Steve pretended not to see the shine of tears on his cheeks.

He was left alone with a monitor, beeping along with his heart, and the faint static of the radio. 

A nurse walked in. "How are you feeling?" She asked. She was young, probably not too much older than Steve himself. "I can start getting rid of all these IVs and whatnot," she began before waiting for Steve to actually answer her.

"What happened to Billy?" Steve asked, and his mind was thinking, of course, that he died.

"Your friend?" She asked. "I'm afraid I can't tell you."

"Why not?" Steve jolted a little, which sent a fresh wave of pain through him.

The nurse bit at her lower lip. "Mr. Hargrove is... in a delicate position right now." She pulled at various wires going into Steve's skin, and it stung a little but not like his chest did when he tried to move. 

"Delicate," he parroted. "So he's not dead?"

The nurse's eyes flashed to Steve's. "He's alive. Just... we're not sure how long he'll stay like that." The nurse finished her tasks and said, "Your parents will be back in a few minutes to help you get ready to go. Do you need anything?"

_I wanted to talk._

_Isn't it the thought that counts?_

_I'm sorry, okay?_

"No," Steve said firmly, voice thick with something he was too afraid to name.

 

\--------------------------

 

The first time he saw Billy in the hospital was a week after the accident. Ever since, his mother had been home more often and his father had been more strict with curfew-- actually setting one for Steve, for the first time in his life. If he wasn't home by ten o' clock, then he could kiss his car keys goodbye. It seemed a little too late for that kind of punishment, but his parents were out of practice with the whole consequences thing, so Steve just accepted his new rules and took his medicine on time, because it kept his mom from crying so much.

He waited for the weekend to come. News traveled through school impossibly fast, and he had to face a torrent of questions most heavily revolving around the impossible fact that he had been with _Billy Hargrove._

Girls flocked to him, but he took no notice. His nose began to heal, just a little, but his chest took longer due to how much he moved his shoulder, even though he was supposed to wear a sling. Nancy bought him a teddy bear, joked about old times

_(Bad Steve)_

and even Jonathan expressed his condolences. On Saturday morning, Steve went to visit Billy in the hospital. He drove, checking the position of his mirrors no less than seven times before hitting the road to complete the short ten-minute drive to Hawkins Mercy Hospital. That was the start of the first year.

Billy looked just like he always had, though the earring had been removed from his lobe and his head was wrapped up with medical gauze, obscuring half of the view. Upon entering, Steve noticed that, while his room had been flooded with cards and flowers, Billy's seemed impossibly bare. "The doc says he might never wake up," Max told him. She had come along, not because Steve had asked her to, but because she was silently scared.

Her step-brother had been different. Max knew that he had still been enduring abuse from his father, but rather than angry and exploding, he was more removed and still; a shadow of what he once was. When she mentioned this observation to Steve he remarked, "I hadn't been seeing him at parties and shit. I wondered what happened."

He didn't elaborate on the fact that he had been wondering about Billy.

Steve stood by the door, not able to make his legs move and not sure he wanted them to anyway. He used Max as an excuse, set himself back to give her space with the other boy. But he did watch. 

Billy's chest moved up and down. He was not brain dead, which meant there was hope for him to wake up. In what condition, they could possibly never predict. Beside him, a monitor beat steadily. His head was wrapped and his legs were set in hard casts and Steve could only cringe when he suddenly remembered the sight of Billy contorted between the glass and the plastic and the metal. His knees thudded, a phantom-ache spreading. There hadn't been much he remembered from that night. There were the mirrors, the damn mirrors

_(and the blood, so much blood, blood everywhere, blood to drink, blood to drown in)_

but then Steve's memory became fuzzy. The next clear thing he could picture was the flashing of the ambulance lights and the sight of Billy. This memory had begun to take the place of the Demodogs and the Upside Down, and suddenly every night Steve would wake from some car-crashed nightmare or other. 

That first year, Billy healed slowly. Sometimes Steve was not permitted to visit because the doctors were working on charts and labs and physical therapy to try and hold off muscle atrophy as best as they could with a broken, lifeless body. Not lifeless, Steve told himself. Just very heavily asleep. Billy ended up celebrating his eighteenth birthday alone in the hospital room, with only a tired nurse humming the _Happy Birthday_ tune under breath as she flipped and fluffed the pillows on the bed. She half-wondered where the boy's father was; he was keeping up with paying the bills, but he never bothered to visit. She didn't know about the past, about how history was repeating itself for Neil Hargrove. 

By the second year, things had returned relatively to normal. There had been an article published about the accident, and that created some buzz, but by then it was all old news, plenty of life-altering accidents replacing the story of Billy and Steve. By the second year, Steve no longer ached when he moved his arm, and there was only the faintest of scars on his nose to show for his ordeal. He had started talking to Billy, because Max had been finding it harder to go with each passing day and it at least filled the silence, even if it was one-way.

"You gotta fuckin' wake up, Hargrove." Steve had taken to sitting in a wooden chair, positioned so that he could lean close to Billy's ear without invading the other boy's personal space, believing that maybe the words would get to his brain easier that way. "You were changing, you can't let that stop."

The casts had been removed and the muscles were worked, but already his limbs were retracting, curling in. If Billy ever wanted to walk again, he'd need to wake up fast.

During the second year, a visit where Steve had drove in from his college campus (he had stayed local for cost and convenience), he met Billy's father. He was an infamous man in Steve's mind, responsible for all of the demons that nested in the young boy's soul, fermenting and spoiling and spewing. He knew these details from Max, who began confiding in Steve that, while Neil never touched her, he would often beat Billy senseless, and suddenly colored bruises and cracked ribs in the locker room made a lot more sense in his mind. 

Steve didn't actually meet the other man, but he stood outside of Billy's room while he listened to his father berate him, even in a life-threatening coma. Neil spit about cost, how he'd stop paying for Billy soon, how the boy didn't deserve anything at all, actually, why don't you go join your mother and sister? The words laced with hatred were enough to make Steve buzz with anger, but he could not bring himself to make a scene. 

"Steve, please," Dustin had begun one night after hitching a ride from Steve to the movies with the rest of the gang. "There's some things you just gotta let go. He's one of them."

Steve's fist gripped the wheel until his fingers became a little numb. "What if Mike had just given up on El?" He countered, knowing that it was quite the comparison to make.  
Dustin swallowed his pride and exited Steve's car, wanting to make his friend happy and not fully understanding why he was bothered so much by Billy's predicament. He wanted to spit and tell Steve that Billy would've killed him, would've done it with no remorse had it not been for Max and the goddamn sedative. But, he held his tongue, and walked into his house. Steve waited, idling on the curb, until the boy made it safely all the way inside. 

It was the third year. Billy blinked. Actually, he opened his eyes and then blinked because he could not lift his arms up to rub at them. They felt weighed down, crushed by an invisible force. He tried to call for help, but he cold not yet talk. So, he stared at a ceiling that he did not recognize and listened to voices floating in and out of earshot. 

Finally someone came into view, and it was the same nurse that had hummed him Happy Birthday that first year, and the second. She would have on the third as well, if it had come to that.

Instead she paused, making eye contact with Billy. She knew from experience that sometimes coma patients could open their eyes and still be unresponsive, so she hesitantly asked, "Hello? Are you there?" As though she were on a phone line and the connection wasn't clear enough.

Billy still couldn't talk, but he could blink again. So he did, and watched as she gasped slightly. "Blink again if that was a response, and not just coincidence."

Billy blinked. 

"Well, shit," the nurse huffed, a happy smile brightening the dark bags under her eyes. "I have to get your doctor."

It took Billy another two days to fully come out of his coma and regain the ability to speak. It started with his eyes, then he could twitch his toes and his fingers, and then he could talk. The hardest things were moving any muscles, even turning his head felt like lifting the heaviest weight he ever had. 

"Hello," Billy croaked. His voice was a heavy grumble of three years with no use, but the nurse smiled with pride at the word.

It was the doctor who spoke, though. "Hello, Mr. Hargrove. How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," Billy told him honestly. "Who are you?"

"I'm the doctor assigned to your case, Billy," he was told. "You wouldn't know that, you've been in a coma."

Billy thought about this. "A coma," he said carefully, tasting the words on his tongue, grinding them between his teeth. "For... how long?"

This made the doctor pause, and Billy didn't like that. "Well, I'm afraid it's been almost eighteen months-- almost three years."

Billy did not immediately react. He remembered being a child, no more than ten or eleven years old, and hearing the news that his mother and sister had died, and his father was crying next to him in the car but he couldn't picture their faces."Mr. Hargrove?" The doctor cut in, seeing the look on Billy's pensive face.

"I... I can't remember," Billy told him.

"You can't remember what?"

Billy swallowed hard. He couldn't see faces, he couldn't picture names. His memories were half-painted, details smudged and puzzle pieces torn so they no longer fit in. He said, "I can't remember anyone."

 

\-------------------------------

 

1986 was not a year that knew a lot about what it meant to be in a coma. The effects of comas on the brain were not understood well, and neither were the results of one in a patient that woke up. There was nothing solid, no pattern to trace. So, Billy began physical therapy. His legs were weaker than they would have been, since they had needed surgery to be healed correctly and the bones had weakened terribly. His arms were saved by the fact that he had been nearly pure muscle before the accident, lifting weights and keeping up an athletic physique enough to slow the damage down minutely-- but enough to regain the ability to hold a pencil and dribble a basketball within a few weeks.  
His legs were the biggest issue. When he was not in physical therapy, Billy would cruise around in a wheelchair. When he was in physical therapy, he could barely exercise the limbs for longer than an hour before not being able to move a single muscle. But it was progress, he supposed. 

Billy felt the weight of those two and a half years in the way his arms would not extend straight out, and in the headache that would form at the slightest of academic exertion. Mostly, he felt that weight in the unknown faces that came to see him, who would explain who they were through gritted teeth, but he could not make the information stay. He was lucky he could keep track of Max. He told himself it was due to her fiery red hair, but the truth was that seeing her always made his stomach swirl with an uneasy cocktail of guilt and self-loathing, a feeling that told him, "you are her brother, and you messed up big time." Eventually, he could remember her without getting a headache, but that remembering lead to a series of thoughts that felt too alien to be real, so Billy just focused on remembering her and not whatever it was that was eating away at him.

It was harder to ignore that feeling when it came back accompanied by a new face, a boy's face with worried brown eyes and big brown hair. Billy felt like throwing up, getting rid of the festering emotions once and for all, but nothing real would come up, anyway. "Billy," the new visitor said.

"Hello?" Billy asked, the confusion evident on his face and in his voice. "I'm sorry, I... I can't remember anyone."

The boy frowned at this. "My name's Steve," he told Billy. "Steve Harrington. We were... well, we weren't friends, but we were getting there."

The explanation made the sick feeling in Billy's stomach twist into something that felt more like regret and lust, but he just blinked, not revealing anything else to Steve Harrington. "Okay." He simply said, sitting up and reaching for the armrest of his wheelchair, pulling it toward himself to go to the bathroom. He saw the Harrington boy flinch at the sight, and felt embarrassment but could not place why. When he came out of the bathroom, Steve was gone, a small get well soon card on the bedside table taking his place. 

There came the day when Billy's father demanded that he come home. The doctors had protested, suggesting that Billy needed to be close to his physical therapist, that Billy would have a harder time healing from home, but Neil insisted, and Billy was yanked from the hospital and taken to a house that screeched of familiarity but that Billy could not form solid memories of. Driving there, he kept waiting to see flashes of the beach and he rolled down his window to smell the salt water of the ocean, only to be greeted by farm fields and the permanent stench of cow shit. 

Getting into the house was more difficult than anyone except for Billy would have guessed. His father cursed the whole time Billy stumbled up the front stairs, only to crash back into his wheelchair once he finally made it to the door, wheeling himself in with his trusty forearms. He was told that his room was upstairs, but he couldn't fathom making it all the way up there just yet, so he asked for a little break.

His father dropped the duffel bag he had been carrying. _"Excuse me?"_  He asked. By the door, still propped open, Billy could see Max tensed up, eyes wide and focused on the floor. A woman stood next to her, arm slung around her shoulder, and they pulled together as if to disappear into their on little bubble. Billy had to remind himself that she was his step-mother; Max and mother, mother and Max.

"A break," he repeated. "I'm not good with my legs yet and--"

The punch to the jaw cracked his head back, rocking the wheelchair a little bit. Billy blinked rapidly, tried to clear his vision which had gone spotty. Neil stood before him, panting, the brim of his mustache flying up with every exhale. Billy's ears were ringing, and he remembered scenes with perfect clarity:

_He was fourteen, pinned between the wall and his father's breath which reeked of alcohol. His lip was split. Flash forward to his fifteenth birthday, and his father was busting open his face because Billy had a tried to joke about Max's dumb hairstyle that she had hated anyway. Then he was sixteen, and Max was frozen in the doorway to his bedroom, eyes wide as she watched him kissing another boy, and her silence was louder than any crack of the belt, any snap of a bone, and then they were moving to a small town and Billy couldn't be himself anymore he had to hide and be better, manlier, stronger--_

"Billy!" His father shouted, spit flying from his lips. 

"Y-yeah."

"Get up those stairs in the next ten minutes, or I'm pushing you down the steps and you can crawl your way to a ditch."

Billy pushed to his feet, knees wobbling, and he leaned heavily on Max when she rushed to help him. Surprisingly, his father did not stop her, and if he had, then Billy would have never made it up the stairs. 

Once in his room, he collapsed on a bed that jostled him like it had two and a half years ago, and he forgot for a moment that he was no longer high school-aged and sneaking home from a long night of partying. He closed his eyes, breathed heavily, tried to ignore the pain in his thighs and shins. "I'm sorry," Max's tiny voice said from the doorway.

"What're you sorry for?" Billy asked.

Max was silent, and Billy didn't have the energy to look and see if she was still there. 

Days passed, and Billy was never given his wheelchair. He laid in bed, mostly, body stiffening up and legs screaming in pain. They needed to be used, and all he could do was drag them to the bathroom and back. He wasn't hungry; when the woman who was supposed to be his step-mother brought him meals, he could do nothing more than pick at them. She was a nervous woman, and her hands shook so hard that a lot of the drinks she brought him spilled along the way and Billy would hear Neil's angry yelling downstairs, but never a hit to anyone except him. He resented the woman for that. Why should he be the only one to get beat?

He had trouble accepting the fact that he was then twenty-years-old. Max was going through her Junior year of high school, and Billy would lay awake, listening to her talk about her days at school with her mother, or hear her loud conversations on the phone and wonder what he missed-- what he was missing because goddammit, he couldn't _remember._

Then she appeared in his room again. "Hey," she started softly. "You think you could drive your car?"

Billy hadn't been going to his physical therapy sessions. The family excuse was that insurance didn't cover the cost and there was no law demanding that he get the help he needed, so he was left to his own devices. Walking was hard, he couldn't imagine controlling a car. The idea of it made him shiver, and he danced on the edge of a memory that would not form and screamed at him in fear. 

After the accident, the dead man's insurance had paid to fix up Billy's car. That wouldn't have made a difference, though, because the strange hunk of metal did little for Billy's sense other than scare him. He felt on edge, already exhausted from venturing his way down the steps with Max's aid. "I don't think I can get back up," he said to her when they were finally back down.

"You have to try, Billy." Max was firm, but in a way that was completely different from his father. It didn't frighten him. Instead, he just felt more guilt.

A quick test-drive revealed that Billy could not control the car. He had lost the fine motor skills required for the easy shift onto the gas, shooting them forward out of the driveway and nearly crashing had it not been for Max's quick pull of the emergency brake. "O--okay," she gasped, unbuckling and getting out to switch sides with Billy. She helped him over to the passenger side, buckling him in firmly even though he insisted that his arms worked just damn fine to do the job. "Where're we goin'?" Billy asked after Max regained control over the car. 

She chuckled a little. "You know," she said before answering. "You never would've let me drive your baby before." She let herself laugh a little more. Then, "Steve wanted to see you. Said you guys had to talk."

"Steve?" Billy questioned. The name he knew, but there was no face coming to mind with it. 

"Steve Harrington," Max told him. "You'll remember when you see his face."

Billy doubted this, but was then blown away by how immediate the recognition was. This was the boy from the hospital, the boy that had said they were almost-friends. Billy had hurt him, somehow. All he could remember was a broken dinner plate and then everything went black. Max parked the car outside of the big house that Harrington visited on the weekends and let it idle for a minute. Billy started to get out, but then she said, "You almost killed Steve."

His gut twisted in the reliable way he had come to expect, but he said nothing, just waiting for Max to elaborate.

When she finally, did, her voice was shaking. "It was a while ago, you and him got into a fight and you almost killed him. I got mad, nearly chopped your balls off and--" She broke off with a sigh, remembering her own demons. "I don't know why, but Steve liked you. He told me that you _apologized_ to him that night," a tear fell down her cheek. "He just wants to see you. Don't fuck it up."

Billy couldn't reply because there was a knock on the window that sent him jumping out of his skin. It was Steve, smiling nervously at him, sending the shock of recognition through Billy's nerves. Billy cracked open the door, thanking Max quietly for driving, although he didn't know why the other boy would want to see him, especially if what Max was saying was true-- and Billy had no reason to doubt that it was.

Steve waited patiently for Billy to swing his legs out of the car, feet resting uncertainly on the concrete curb. "Need any help?" He asked, and Billy could only shake his head in a firm no before forcing himself to just get up. His legs were still tired from going down the stairs, but walking in a straight, even line was a little easier. He began walking toward Harrington's house, unsteady, and things were progressing well enough, until his left knee buckled and he almost crashed to the ground.

Steve caught him, managed to haul him back upright, and helped him walk the rest of the way into the house. "It's okay," Billy heard him pant. They finally made it inside, and Max sped away, the loud motor's disappearance settling Billy's nerves a little. 

He sat on the couch while Steve stood, thinking, hands wrapped around himself, contemplating. Billy broke the silence with, "Max says you wanted to talk to me."

This kick-started Steve. "Yeah," he nodded enthusiastically. "I, uh, well, Max told me about your dad and how he doesn't take you to physical therapy."

The fact that Steve knew that made Billy's mouth taste bitter, and his jaw clenched as he nodded.

Steve continued on, not noticing the embarrassment, or at least pretending not to notice. "Well, one time my old man pulled a muscle in his back really bad-- like, he had to go to the hospital to get everything all sorted out. He didn't need physical therapy, but the doctors recommended swimming, you know, working the muscles but not as intensely, to start."

"Okay." Billy didn't know where Steve was going with his little anecdote.

"I was just wondering if you'd like to give it a try. For free, in my pool. If you want, you can work your legs and all that. I've read about it more, out of curiosity and it's a legit medical practice-- using a pool for physical therapy."

"Um," Billy hesitated. He hadn't been told to bring any swimming trunks. Steve wasn't deterred by this, though. He let Billy borrow a pair, and helped him out to the pool in his backyard. It was a little awkward that first time, light bruises fading on Billy's torso that whispered of injuries more recent than the crash, but Steve couldn't bring himself to ask. 

For the next few weeks, Steve let Billy swim in his pool. Some days were cooler than others, and Billy would give up after a few minutes, shivering a little, but mostly he enjoyed the activity. He kicked his legs and walked and jumped, and slowly the muscles started to get stronger. Soon walking out of the water became easier, and after a month, Billy could walk up the stairs in his house without support from Max.

During this time, Steve would swim as well. Maybe it was just to have something to do, or maybe Steve didn't want to just awkwardly watch the other boy from the sidelines, but he would splash around as Billy worked, relenting only when Billy started to get tired. They didn't talk much, but Billy felt like they were both tiptoeing around something catastrophically important. 

He and Steve raced a lot, and at first Steve won without a doubt, Billy's legs struggling to continuously kick, but after a while the races became more competitive and tight. When they weren't racing or messing around, Billy would float in the water. He'd anchor himself in the deep end by resting his head on his arms on the tiled edge of the pool and let his legs drift up and out. After a few minutes, it would feel like he didn't have legs anymore; he was just a body, floating around with no pain. Sometimes he would fall asleep, and Steve would have to wake him when the day started to cool off. 

Billy was floating. The chlorine in his nose burned a little, and the burn reminded him of the ocean. Not completely, because salt water had a different taste and smell, but enough that he began to think he was somewhere else. The name of the place was California, and he knew that it was a different state on the other side of the country, but in that moment he felt as if he were there.

He heard a woman's voice telling him, "Have a good day at school, Billy, I love you." And he could see curly blonde hair and kind blue eyes sparkling in the sunlight. _Ma,_ he called out in the dream-memory. _Ma, don't take her to the doctor's today._

A small head of brunette hair flashed by, a young girl's giggle filling the air. Neither girl had heard Billy's warning, and his father was shuffling him out the door toward the school bus. Billy kept looking back at them, trying to soak up the details of the scene. There was his mother, not his step-mother, but the woman who had given birth to him, sitting on the ottoman and brushing out his younger sister's hair. The little girl's face was contorted in pain as her mother worked through knots, lovingly pausing to rub the pain away and kiss her forehead gently. Billy was floored to realize that he could actually see their faces, they were not blurred like the other ones he struggled to remember all of the time. He saw his own eyes reflected in his mother's, and that made sense because his eyes were nothing like his father's. No, his little sister had gotten those features.   
He was being forced onto the school bus even though he was crying for his mother, screaming, wailing, and it was no longer a memory but present-day Billy sobbing in a dream, remembering the day his life changed forever. 

The chlorine stopped reminding him of the ocean, and Steve shook him awake with a worried look. He had never seen Billy cry before, and the boy was sobbing. His whole body shook with the action, and Steve had to help him out of the pool and wrap him in a towel, letting him sink onto the sun-warmed grass, propped up by the wall of his house. Billy was curled in on himself, heaving, chest rattling. Steve had long since dried off, but he let Billy soak him with pool water as he held him, awkwardly shushing him and trying to calm him down. Billy gasped, "I remember her, I know her, they're both gone, I remember I remember _I remember I--"_

"Okay," Steve said gently, hugging Billy tighter. 

When Billy did calm down, the sun was beginning to set. He was shivering a little-- less from the chill of the air and more from the emotions that had just escaped him. He was exhausted, eyes puffy and ready to fall closed. Steve helped him into the house and to the bathroom, where Billy dressed himself and avoided looking in the mirror, avoided seeing the eyes that matched his mother's so perfectly. 

Afterward, he sat on Steve's couch, stewing in shame. "I'm sorry," he muttered, accepting the mug of coffee from the other boy. Steve always made it decaff, and Billy appreciated it more for the warmth anyway. 

"You don't have to be sorry," Steve told him, sipping his own drink (tea, Steve had never been a big coffee drinker).

"I must've fuckin' freaked you out," Billy shrugged, putting his mug down on the kitchen table.

Steve said, "Really, Billy, it's okay."

There was silence while both boys sipped at their drinks and thought about their own things. Finally Billy began to speak again. "It was my mother." Steve glanced up, leaning in a little to catch all of the details. "I remembered her. And my little sister-- not Max," he corrected, seeing Steve's expression. "No. I had a biological sister. And my real mother. It wasn't a dream, it was me finally remembering the day they died."

Steve was silent while he watched Billy. He remembered three years ago, how the boy had knocked him unconscious, nearly beat his brains out. Before that, Steve remembered all of the ridicule he faced from Billy during gym, in the locker room, in the school halls. He couldn't connect that Billy to the boy sitting across from him just then. "What else do you remember?" Steve asked.

Billy looked at him, picking up on what he meant. "I remember this dark feeling in my chest. It was suffocating. I remember hating Max because she was everything I lost, everything I could never get back, and I remember hating my dad because he hated me, too. I remember being scared. When I look at you, I remember hitting you a lot." He huffed, pushed away from the table a little. "It's fucking hard. I only remember these things when I see faces. Every other second of the day is just this never-ending feeling of _unknown."_

"You almost killed me," Steve told him, echoing Max's sentiments from a few weeks earlier. He added, "But the night of the accident, you apologized to me. I mean, that was a lot coming from you. Before that, I didn't think you had any emotions. Now--" Steve stopped, looked away from Billy and down at the table. There was electricity in the air, and Billy remembered being sixteen and kissing that boy before Max found them and--

"It's getting late," he announced. He stood to go dump his cold coffee into the sink, washing the mug out. "I should call Max, have her come get me."

Steve looked at his watch. "You could crash here, if you want."

Billy raised an eyebrow. "Wouldn't your parents mind?"

"Nah," Steve shrugged. "They're away. Besides, I have to drive back to campus tomorrow, so I can just take you home on my way there."

Billy nodded. "Okay."

Sleeping at Steve Harrington's house felt weird. He gave Billy a blanket and offered him the bed in the guest bedroom, but it was springy and unused. Billy's legs enjoyed the comfort, but his chest ached. He was scared that if he went back to sleep, he'd see his mother and sister again, and he wasn't ready for that. When he finally did sleep, he dreamed of crashing cars and Steve kissing him, and he wasn't able to tell which made his heart beat faster.

He thanked Steve for driving him home the next day. Before Steve could drive away, Billy paused in the passenger seat. "I was trying to be better," he said. "I hurt a lot of people."

"Yeah," was all Steve could say back.

Billy sniffled, then got out of the car. 

He made it to the front steps with ease, climbed up a little slowly but with little pain, not glancing back at Steve's car that always stayed parked until he made it inside. When Billy reached for the doorknob to go in, he was met with the sight of his father yanking the door open, standing with a pale face and angry, storm cloud eyes. "Who's that, son?" He asked, voice a low grumble of threats.

"Just a friend," Billy mumbled, dropping his gaze to the floor. "I knew him in high school."

"Hm," his father leaned over, waved at Steve. If Billy had looked he would have seen Steve's curios glare that stayed glued on his father until he was out of sight, but Billy didn't look. He knew better not to. "Let me get this straight," he said, lowering his raised hand and clenching it into a fist by his side. "You're in a coma for almost three years, and nobody gives a shit about you enough to come visit, except for Max, God knows why." His father's pale cheeks were beginning to redden. "Then you wake up, thousands of my hard-earned dollars later, and disappear for days on end with some college-bound liberal faggot, when I thought your legs didn't even work the right way."

Billy felt the hot sting of tears burn his eyes, but he did not let them fall and he did not say anything back to his father.

"Get in the house." Neil commanded, and Billy's legs moved numbly, no pain, no protest. He was sixteen again, kissing some random boy that he couldn't fucking picture. He was seventeen, and Max had gone out with friends and he didn't know where the fuck she was and now he was twenty, unable to run or fight back because he could barely stand for a minute longer.

He tried to save himself. "He was letting me use his pool," he began to explain. "We haven't been going to therapy and the water--"

His father shoved him up against the door, walls rattling and picture frames twisting. Billy's legs crumpled, and his father grunted with the effort of holding up Billy's dead weight. "I thought you learned your lesson in California," he said slowly. His voice ground Billy's ears like stones on the pavement, and he held in a sob. He was out of practice with facing his father, he couldn't remember how he ever remained calm in front of those soulless black eyes. _I'm your son,_ Billy wanted to yell. _I'm the only one left. Me, not Max. I'm your son--_

His father punched him in the face, and that was the start of it all. Billy couldn't keep himself upright, but his father had no problem hauling him back up and connecting his fist with his skull again and again, and Billy could only take it, semi-conscious. He knew that any head trauma could fuck him up infinitely worse than before, he just woke up from a coma no less than three months ago, but his father didn't seem to register this.

He beat Billy, splitting his lip and cracking a rib as though it were as easy as swatting at buzzing flies, killing them left and right with blows half-halfheartedly swung. Billy laid on the floor until his father stopped and walked away, grumbling. "I thought you were fixed," Billy heard his dad say. "Before that accident, I thought you were chasing pussy for once."

Billy was left in the foyer, trying to catch his breath. His legs hurt, but not from usage. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to blink, but he managed to pull himself into a sitting position, back resting against the door. He heard the refrigerator open in the kitchen, listened as his father cracked open a can of beer. His eyes shifted, and atop the stairs sat Max, eyes wide, tears falling. He tried to smile at her, but it came out as more of a grimace. 

She tiptoed down the stairs and helped him up to the bathroom, where she sat him on the toilet and began cleaning his face with soap and water, unable to find peroxide. Out of all the blurry memories Billy struggled with when he saw her, there was nothing like this in his brain. He usually got his beatings when she was out of the house-- _because_ she was out of the house. She had never helped him before.

Her touch was impossibly light, too light, and it took a lot more toilet paper than it would have if she had just applied the right amount of pressure, but Billy didn't complain. He let her half-drag, half-stumble him back to his bedroom and laid him on his bed, still crying but not saying anything. 

Then she left the room, and Billy could hear her picking up the line in her room, dialing a number, her muffled voice talking. He couldn't pick out much of anything, and before he could try, he fell asleep.

 

\--------------------

 

The Upside Down was a work in progress. Steve wondered if it would ever be finished, but no matter what he and his group of kids (that were really almost adults at that point) would do, there was always some sort of residue left behind. So, out came his trusty baseball bat to beat off some demon or another, earning his fair share of scrapes and scratches and busted skin. He was used to his phone ringing late at night, whether he was on-campus or at his house, and he knew that it would always be one of the kids calling him for help. There was no Nancy in his life to call him and talk late into the night, and his parents were more of the letter-writing type. 

When he picked up the phone and heard Max sobbing on the other end, he had to ask her what happened, what was wrong, five times before she could say anything to him. "Is it Lucas? Dustin? Max, did one of them--"

"It's Billy," She finally sobbed, and Steve had to pause at this. 

He had seen Billy just a few days ago. He had been fine, making tremendous progress in the pool and--

It must've been his father. 

"Max, what happened to him?" He asked.

"I've talked with the boys, and with Jane, and we don't know what to do for him," she began to explain. Her voice was slowly beginning to calm down, and Steve waited patiently. "We can't save him. We can't fucking close the gate on his dad with Jane's powers, we can't banish him to another dimension, but he-- God, Steve, he's gonna kill Billy one day."

"Did he beat him up?" Steve questioned, trying to keep his voice low. At that point in the school year, the RA was more than used to the amount of calls Steve would get and had become used to leaving the room to give the boy privacy, but the door was still open and there was no need to draw a crowd or start any gossip. 

Max stuttered, "Y--yeah," and paused to sniffle. "Really bad, a few days ago. Worse than I've seen in a while. I mean, obviously, he was in a fucking coma for three years!"

"Okay, Max, calm down." Steve tried to comfort her, but there was only so much he could do through the phone.

"Calm down?" Max parroted. "I can't! I was finally starting to have a normal brother, a nice brother, and this shithead is gonna bring out the old Billy!" Steve heard her breathing heavily. "Billy's always been fucked," she finally continued. "He had a mother and a sister-- a real mother and sister, and they both died when he was ten. Guess how?"

Steve didn't want to take a guess.

Max answered anyway. "They died in a fucking car accident. My mom told me about it, when she and his dad first started going together. That's when his dad started really beating him."

Steve remembered Billy in the pool, crying over his mother and sister that he lost, how he explained to Steve who they were but never mentioned how they died. "It sounds to me like he needs to move the fuck out," Steve said, after the line had been nothing but buzzing static for a few moments.

"And do what?" Max asked, exasperated. "He never graduated high school, 'cause of the accident. I mean, you were barely able to and you woke up a lot sooner than him. Where would he go? What would he do?"

Steve set his jaw, tried not to cry. He hated hearing the heartbreak in the young girl's voice. "He's tough," he finally managed. "He'll figure something out."

 

\------------------------------

 

"My name is Billy Hargrove. I used to be a student here. I was in a coma for almost three years. I'm twenty years old, I'd like to get my GED."

Billy rehearsed the sentences late into the nights he spent healing from his father's abuse. He'd whisper them quietly, not sure what his father would do if he heard them. Billy had wanted to get away-- all his life he wanted to get away. He had been planning on graduating and going back to California, back to where his mother was, back to where things made sense and where his father would not follow him. But he'd need a job, and he had been so close to graduating before the car crash, he didn't think it would take long to get the diploma. It would be a lot easier to get some sort of job, a better paying job, with one anyway.

Max would hover in his doorway a lot, watch as he muttered his little speech with his eyes closed in concentration. She wanted to talk to him, but couldn't even think of how to begin. She couldn't relate to him, Neil never beat her. 

One day, she brought Steve over. Her mother and Neil were out on some date that Billy wouldn't dare try to think about, so it was easy to get Steve up to Billy's room. It was a Saturday, so Steve had already driven in from campus anyway. "Hey, Billy," Max spoke gently. It had been a week since the beating and she had only seen Billy get out of bed to go to the bathroom, his legs bent in pain beneath him.

Billy opened his eyes slowly, stopped muttering, and looked at Max. His eyes slid over her and sized up Steve, a faint pink color rising on his cheeks. "What?" He asked.

Steve explained himself, sparing Max the trouble. "I wanted to see you," he said quickly. "Check up on things." Billy grunted, but didn't contribute much to the conversation. "September's ending," Steve informed him. "I'm gonna have to shut my pool down soon. Have you been going during the week?"

Billy was ready to reply with a lie but Max cut in with a firm, "No. He hasn't." Billy didn't even glare at her.

There was nothing of the Billy from three years ago left in him.

"Well, you have to use it before my 'rents close it up for the season," Steve insisted, moving into the room to help him out of bed.

"M'not going," Billy mumbled, letting his eyes fall shut again.

Steve straightened, a little surprised. He had been expecting the Billy he knew years ago, the Billy that would fight and stubbornly pursue his battles even when he was on the losing side. "Billy--"

"There's no point," He lashed out, voice a little stronger. "It's not real medicine, it's not doing anything. My legs aren't ever going to be what they were, not with maybe two more sessions in a pool before it closes for months on end. I'll use a fuckin' cane."

Steve huffed, blowing air up to push a stray strand of hair out of his eyes. "No," he said, and groped for Billy's arms under the blanket, yanking him into a sitting position. 

The shirt Billy was wearing was old, and baggy, and nothing like Steve had ever seen on him before. Beneath the collar, a faint yellow was spreading over his sweaty skin. Billy hissed and pulled out of Steve's grip, all of the sudden action stinging his limbs a little. "Fuck off," Billy groaned, ready to fall back on the bed and rehearse his mantra for the millionth time.

"Billy," Max said. The two boys had forgotten that she was standing there. She was too quiet. They both turned to her then, Steve begging for help with his eyes and Billy looking like a marble statue, dusty and stored away somewhere for eternity. "I hear you, sometimes. Talking about going to the high school for the GED or whatever. Why don't you focus on that, instead?"

The slight pink that had decorated Billy's face flushed to a bright red. "You eavesdroppin'?"

"Yeah," Max shrugged. "Because I'm worried about you! You can't stay here, Billy. Neil'll kill you."

Billy glanced down at his hands, resting in his lap uselessly. "I know," he sighed.

"Come on," Steve said gently. "I'll drive you."

Max and Steve helped Billy to the car, but Max planned to stay behind just to fend off Neil in case they came home early. "Hold on," Billy groaned, halfway there. "I need that duffel bag."

"I'll get it," Max offered. "Why?"

Billy thought about the clothes that were stored away in there, shirts and pants that hadn't been unpacked since his return from the hospital. "Because if I'm going, I'm not coming back."

Tilting her head to the side, Max blinked away confused tears. "What do you mean? This stuff doesn't happen overnight."

"I know," Billy nodded. "I'll stay at a hotel somewhere, but I'm going, Max. I'll write. If I remember."

"Your car," Max choked out. "You love that thing, you can't leave it yet."

Billy shook his head, a little sad. "I can't drive it anymore."

He turned to Steve's car and opened the door to get in, stopped only when Max slammed into him, embracing him in a hug tight enough to squeeze his aching rib a little bit. It hurt, but in a good way. His heart hammered dangerously. 

Max was gone in an instant, running inside to get the duffel bag. Steve helped Billy lower himself into the seat, and then took the bag from Max and put it in the trunk. Billy lowered the window, found Max's eyes from where she stood standing on the curb. "I'll see you before I really go, okay?" He offered.

This brightened Max a little, and she batted tears away. "Alright," she nodded. "Just be safe. No comas."

Billy smiled a little. "No comas."

Steve drove them toward the high school in silence. Billy was thinking about California, about his old house were his mother would always be the first one awake, making breakfast and humming _American Pie_ under her breath as she cooked. She also hummed The Beatles' _Blackbird_ often, and now Billy couldn't listen to those songs without turning into mush. He wanted to stand on the beach and let the Pacific Ocean wash over his toes and never see a flake of snow again in his life. He needed to go more than he needed air.

Steve began to talk, derailing Billy's train of thought. "You can stay at my place, if you want."

"Hm?"

"Instead of hotels, man. You can stay in the guest bedroom." Steve was staring straight ahead hard, focused intensely on the road. Ever since the accident, he had been more rigid driving, but offering Billy a place to stay made him feel more unbalanced than anything had before.

"Okay, staying the night is one thing, but I know your parents won't be okay with housing me for however long it takes--"

"They're never home, Billy," Steve tells him, pulling into the empty school lot. It was Saturday, after all. The only people that would be there would be the people Billy needed to talk to about finally graduating. "It was different after the accident. They started watching more closely. But things went back to normal. So I'll just tell them your spending the night when they do show up, they won't care. Besides, you're not like you used to be. It'll be fine."

As Steve parked, Billy thought over the other boy's words. "Tell me how I used to be."

"Billy..."

"No, I need to hear it."

The truth was that Billy did remember hitting Steve a lot. He also remembered not wanting to hit Steve, but being so scared of what his feelings meant that all he could do was hit him, but he hoped that there was maybe something more to who he had been. Steve sighed, put his car in park. "You were an asshole." The engine shut off. "I hated you. With all my guts, I hated you. You used to call me King Steve and tell me about how you were taking over and I didn't give a shit but you were always there and--" Steve blew out air, unbuckled. "It doesn't matter anymore. You're different."

"Do people really change so much, though?" Billy asked him.

Steve glanced across the devider. "We have to change," he replied. "It's the only way we survive."

They got out and walked into the school and to the front office. Steve was recognized immediately by the secretary, who _ooh_ ed and _ahhh_ ed over his college stories, but Billy wasn't paid much attention. After the millionth giggle from the gray-haired woman, Steve cleared his throat and politely said, "Sorry, but I'm not here to visit. My friend has a question."

He shrugged to Billy, and eyes sparkling with recognition fell to him.

Billy took a deep breath and said, "My name is Billy Hargrove. I used to be a student here. I was in a coma for almost three years. I'm twenty years old, I'd like to get my GED."

 

\--------------------

 

Living with Billy Hargrove was not the nightmare Steve imagined it would be. He swam a few more times, until his mother called from her most recent business trip and reminded Steve that it was time to drain the pool for the season, and then he did smaller work outs in the guest bedroom where he was staying. Billy was not messy, and did not invade Steve's space. In fact, the door to the guest bedroom remained closed throughout most days, and the only sign Steve had that revealed Billy was still alive was the soft sound of music floating the wood; not blasting like he used to do in his car, but just loud enough to study and study and study without getting distracted.

Sometimes, Billy would sing along with the music. When that happened, if Steve happened to be home for the night or on the weekends, he would pause outside of the room and listen to the other boy's voice. It wasn't good, but it was far from bad. It was humanizing. There were other times, when the room was dead silent and all Steve could hear was a soft sniffling and the occasional sob. On those nights, he wanted to go into the room and hold Billy, but Steve knew that would not be allowed by the other boy. 

Billy passed the test for his GED, and had a beer for the first time since the accident to celebrate. "Congratulations!" Steve had exclaimed, pulling Billy into a genuine hug that threw both of them for a curve. It was awkward, one of Billy's hands holding the beer tightly and the other wrapped around Steve's shoulders, and things sort of happened in slow motion. "You did it," Steve whispered in Billy's ear, and Billy shivered. He felt Steve pull away slightly and resisted the urge to hold him tighter, only to be surprised when Steve cupped his face on either side. _"You did it,"_ he repeated, smiling crazily.

"Yeah," Billy choked out. "I did it."

Then he leaned forward and kissed Steve.

He hadn't kissed a boy since he was sixteen and living in California, and it wasn't like kissing girls was _bad,_ it just wasn't what he wanted. He set the beer aside and pulled Steve closer, kissing him deeper, shocked that he hadn't been beaten away yet. Steve wasn't exactly kissing him back, but he wasn't stopping everything, so Billy pressed on.

He remembered the locker room, seeing Steve so hurt from a break up and all he could do was make fun of him, but all he had wanted was to kiss him, kiss him better than any girl could, but that was illegal in his mind then. Now, he had nothing to lose. He'd be going to California, he had his GED, he could do anything. And the first thing he wanted to do with that freedom was kiss Steve Harrington.

Hesitantly, Steve wrapped his arms around Billy's neck and kissed him back, the spark of electricity that had been building between them for more than three years finally exploding in the movement of their lips, the tears of happiness that were shed. 

Billy knew that Max would find out, again, but she would not tell Neil about it. That first time hadn't been anything malicious, anyway. She was just a curious little girl wondering why her new step-brother was kissing another boy, and the word had gotten to Neil through his step-mother's worries.

But there was nothing to fear then. No car crashes, no angry fathers, no creatures from other dimensions, just two boys that had always danced an odd line around something they were both too afraid to approach. 

Billy kissed Steve and he thought about going home, starting over, and being better. 

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so here's the thing, I love my car, her name is Tabitha, I trust her, but a few weeks ago I had a nightmare that my mirrors were fucked up and I couldn't fix them and I crashed and fucking died.
> 
> hahaha i love using my inner demons as writing fuel
> 
> If you made it to the end of this and liked it, thanks for reading! If you didn't like it, thanks for giving it a shot! I'm still writing stuff whenever I can :)


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